Collective Action & Property Rights News

Thursday, February 19, 2015

AWARDS: Carl K. Eicher Award for PhD Dissertation

The International Association of Agricultural Economists is calling for nominations for the first Carl K. Eicher Award for the best PhD Dissertation on African agricultural economics. Nominations are for students who graduated in 2012-14 and are due by March 15th. Please see full details here.

PUBLICATION: Society & Natural Resources Articles

Society & Natural Resources is pleased to offer free access to a selection of over 50 highly cited and important articles. The articles will be free to access until 31st July 2015. Please find the articles here.

Training: PhD Training Opportunities under the RUFORUM - Graduate Teaching Assistantship Program In order to meet the growing demand for Doctoral level scientists in Africa, the Graduate Teaching Assistantship (GTA) programme was initiated by RUFORUM Vice Chancellors to improve the quality of higher education at African Universities by increasing the proportion of academic staff with PhD qualifications, contributing to locally relevant research and reducing the time away from the home institution. The initiative was officially launched by the African Union Commissioner for Human Resource, Science and Technology, H.E. Dr Martial De Paul Ikounga on 25th July 2014 at Maputo, Mozambique during the RUFORUM Fourth Biennial Conference. Click here to download full call.

EMPLOYMENT: Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow (IFPRI) The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seeks a qualified candidate to serve as Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow to help develop it’s research agenda on resilience. For full details and to apply, please see here. Deadline is Feb. 22.

EMPLOYMENT: Gender and Natural Resource Management Specialist (ICIMOD) ICIMOD is looking for a gender expert with substantive conceptual and theoretical knowledge and understanding of gender issues in natural resource management, climate change, and social systems; who is capable of providing technical expertise integrating social and gender dimensions, perspectives and approaches into ICIMOD’s regional programmes, initiatives and thematic areas; and who has substantial experience conducting research and policy advocacy and ensuring gender-positive impacts. Read more and apply here.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

TRAINING: Commons – management, governance and sustainability’

The Countryside and Community Institute (CCRI) at the University of Gloucestershire is launching a programme of ONLINE short courses called ‘Commons – management, governance and sustainability’. Improving the management of 'commons' is vital to addressing the challenge of climate change and other environmental problems. Sponsored by the International Association for the Study of Commons (IASC), this distance learning programme – the first of its kind - aims at raising awareness and improving the management of common resources.

By commons we mean resources that are shared in some way by different individuals, communities, or groups, and can be present at local, regional or global scales. Commons can include shared grazing pasture, forests and their produce, marine resources such as fisheries, and at a larger scale biodiversity, and the global atmosphere.

The six courses in the programme, which can be taken as individual courses, will be delivered jointly by the CCRI and the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (IIS-UNAM), in both English and Spanish, under the auspices of the IASC.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: Contested Agronomoy

Contested Agronomy: Cases, Dynamics & Implications is a conference about the battlefields in agricultural research, past and present. We are inviting abstracts (from individuals), proposals for panels (up to four people + chair), and expressions of interest in attending from non-presenters. The deadline is 30 April 2015.To apply and for more details, visit the website: http://www.ids.ac.uk/events/contested-agronomy-cases-dynamics-and-implications

Date and venue23 – 25 February 2016Institute of Development StudiesUniversity of Sussex, UKFee: £150 (a limited number of grants are available for participants based in developing countries)

Each annual prize competition is judged by an international jury of experts in the field of institutional research. The 2015 jury consists of Bruno Amable, Christopher Coyne, Thrainn Eggertsson, William Milberg, Ugo Pagano, and Malcolm Rutherford. The 2015 Elinor Ostrom Prize will be awarded for the best full-length article published in the Journal of Institutional Economics in 2014. The winner will be announced at the conference of the World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 10-13 September 2015.

Training: “Qualitative Methods for Assessing the Impact of Development Programmes on Food Security"

A new e-learning course entitled: "Qualitative Methods for Assessing the Impact of Development Programmes on Food Security" is now available free of charge online and on CD-Rom at: http://www.fao.org/elearning

The course was jointly developed by Wageningen University and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

This course promotes a common methodological approach and a set of practical tools to provide guidance and assist, programme managers, and monitoring and evaluation officers, on the use qualitative methods to conduct the assessment of food security and nutrition impact, of development programmes.

This course is part of a series of three courses in this thematic area, accessible from the same website, namely: "Assessing Impact of Development Programmes on Food Security" available in English, French and Spanish and "Monitoring and Evaluation of Food and Agriculture Programmes" soon available in English.

Over the years, universities in Africa have sought opportunities to send their staff for post-graduate training abroad in a bid to strengthen research and training, at very high costs. The loss of faculty for 4 to 5 years has negatively affected universities. In order to meet the growing demand for Doctoral level scientists in Africa, the Graduate Teaching Assistantship (GTA) programme was initiated by RUFORUM Vice Chancellors to improve the quality of higher education at African Universities by increasing the proportion of academic staff with PhD qualifications, contributing to locally relevant research and reducing the time away from the home institution. The initiative was officially launched by the African Union Commissioner for Human Resource, Science and Technology, H.E. Dr Martial De Paul Ikounga on 25th July 2014 at Maputo, Mozambique during the RUFORUM Fourth Biennial Conference. Click here to download full call.

EMPLOYMENT: Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow (IFPRI)

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seeks a qualified candidate to serve as Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow (RF/SRF) for a two-year, fixed-term, renewable appointment in the Director General’s Office. This position will report to the Chief of Staff, under the overall guidance of the Director General.

IFPRI’s 2013-2018 Strategy (http://www.ifpri.org/publication/ifpri-strategy-2013-2018) has identified ‘Building Resilience’ as one of its six strategic research areas. In 2014, IFPRI convened an international conference on “Building Resilience for Food and Nutrition Security” and subsequently organized a workshop to further advance the research agenda on resilience (http://www.2020resilience.ifpri.info/). IFPRI now aims to develop an integrated resilience research program that will help fill important gaps in resilience research, set benchmarks for achieving resilience at various levels, and help policymakers and practitioners evaluate, design, and implement policies, programs, and investments for successfully building resilience to multiple shocks including economic, environmental, and social shocks that adversely impact on food and nutrition security.

The candidate will help to develop this research portfolio, among other responsibilities. For full details and to apply, please see here. Deadline is Feb. 22.

ICIMOD is looking for a gender expert with substantive conceptual and theoretical knowledge and understanding of gender issues in natural resource management, climate change, and social systems; who is capable of providing technical expertise integrating social and gender dimensions, perspectives and approaches into ICIMOD’s regional programmes, initiatives and thematic areas; and who has substantial experience conducting research and policy advocacy and ensuring gender-positive impacts.

PUBLICATION: Secure and equitable land rights in the Post-2015 Agenda. A key issue in the future we want

This technical briefing authored by a number of international organizations working on food security, natural resources management, and poverty eradication and endorsed by many local civil society organizations around the world strongly encourage governments to keep the profile of land and natural resources high in the document on sustainable development goals to be endorsed in September 2015.

The brief argues that the Post-2015 Agenda must address the structural factors that undermine sustainable development. Secure and equitable land rights, particularly for those living in poverty and using and managing ecosystems, are an essential element of a Post-2015 Agenda that has the ambition to be people-centered and planet-sensitive. In order to realize its transformative potential, the Post-2015 Agenda should ensure that all women, men, indigenous peoples and local communities have secure rights to land, property, and natural resources necessary for their livelihoods and well-being, and should devise a monitoring framework accordingly